19
HOLLYWOOD HELL
To what extent all these proceedings had spiraled out of control was captured in an article in the Santa Barbara Independent aptly entitled HOLLYWOOD HELL. In part it stated: Jesse James Hollywood’s defense team is fighting tooth and nail to get veteran Santa Barbara prosecutor Ron Zonen removed from its client’s case. It was a wise move by the defense to try and get Zonen removed—a defense attorney named Sam Eaton told the Independent, “He’s really good at his job. After one case I tried against Zonen, the defendant’s mother said to me, ‘I don’t think even God could get him off now.’”
“The defense team fighting tooth and nail” was an accurate assessment. Even when the California State Attorney General’s Office appeared to be disinclined to remove Ron Zonen from the case, James Blatt persisted. He wrote a memorandum of points and authorities to Judge Hill for an evidentiary hearing, asserting, An evidentiary hearing must be conducted to resolve the inconsistencies and to discover with certainty Deputy District Attorney Zonen’s motivation for his conduct as consultant to the filmmakers.
Blatt said it was disingenuous of Zonen to say he wasn’t aware of laws prohibiting the release of certain material, and noted that Zonen was a knowledgeable prosecutor with many years’ experience in practicing law. Blatt stated that he was skeptical about Zonen’s claim that he only helped the filmmakers because he’d run out of options in trying to discover the whereabouts of Jesse James Hollywood.
Now Blatt went even further, he wanted the whole Santa Barbara District Attorney’s Office taken off the case. Blatt said he found it impossible to believe that Ron Zonen hadn’t told DA Sneddon what he was doing, as far as the filmmakers were concerned. On this issue Blatt noted that Sneddon and all other DDAs had remained silent as to whether they knew what Zonen was up to or not.
Blatt finally claimed that because of Ron Zonen’s conduct, Mike Mehas had quit cooperating with him (Blatt) on discovery issues, and that was a violation of the law and made it impossible for his client to have a fair trial. Blatt declared, “Mr. Mehas is the most critical witness in these recusal proceedings. Deputy District Attorney Zonen’s communications with Mr. Mehas are not consistent with innocent behavior. To the contrary, his actions are more akin to those that represent consciousness of guilt.”
Eventually Michael Mehas was compelled to testify on the stand in November 2005, in a hearing on this recusal issue. The Ventura County Reporter ran an article on the battle of wills between Mehas and defense counsel Alex Kessel, once Mehas was on the stand. Kessel asked Mehas where an audiotape was of an interview Mehas had conducted with Ben Markowitz. The newspaper reported: Seemingly flustered by the amount of annoyance in the attorney’s voice, Mehas mutters something about having handed the tape over to his own lawyer. The questioning continues like this for what seems like an eternity. As sexy as this case is—full of drugs, guns and an international manhunt and characters’ names ripped from a 1950s potboiler—this particular hearing is excruciatingly boring. The reporter called it two hours of semantic hairsplitting.
One thing very detrimental to the prosecution, and Zonen in particular, was a comment that Mehas made on the stand at that hearing. He said that he saw Zonen’s presentation of the murder, and that of witnesses he had talked to, as being inconsistent. In other words, Mehas seemed to indicate that certain witnesses had not told investigators or Zonen the truth, but rather they told them things the investigators wanted to hear about Jesse James Hollywood. Mehas indicated that these witnesses told him things that differed from what they had told law enforcement and the DA’s office earlier. With that said, Blatt and Kessel wanted all material that Mehas had gleaned to be turned over to them. Mehas initially refused because he termed this his “work product,” but Judge Hill so ordered, and Mehas would have faced jail time if he didn’t comply.
Judge Hill did decree that Mehas didn’t have to surrender any written work to the court at the present time, but he did have to try and recall what his conversation had been with Christina Pressley when he had interviewed her, and get back to the court with that information within a month. And when he gave the material to the court, the contents would not be released to the public.
Mike Mehas testified to one more important thing from the stand—just where he stood on his feelings about Jesse James Hollywood and the case in general. Mehas said, “Nick Cassavetes and I feel a heavy pathos for our involvement. I’ve had a tremendous amount of it. I tried to be as truthful as I could. I dramatized a couple of things, but I tried to bring the truth of what happened, so we can present this story in as full [detail] as we could, so if it teaches somebody a lesson about how to take care of their kid and not let their kid get in this kind of situation, then at least we’ve benefited that one person. But in this process, I’m going to tell a lot of stuff that’s probably going to create a negative impression on Jesse James Hollywood in front of his day in court. It was through that feeling that I felt I could help save his life by at least enlightening the defense on these issues. I don’t want him to die.”
Mehas had a very interesting thing to say to the Ventura County Reporter journalist in the days after the hearing: The one man who I probably have the greatest relationship with there (in court), and I’ve never met or spoken to him in my life, is Jesse James Hollywood. I make eye contact with him, and that eye contact is so powerful to me. He smiled to me, I smiled back at him, and it just reminded me that this young kid is out there with a heart, and he probably knows whatever he did are mistakes, and he’s battling for his life.
Everything was a quagmire now, as far as Alpha Dog went. The film was slated for the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in early 2006, but its general release was in a legal no-man’s-land. The New York Times stated that it gave new meaning to postproduction snags. Even though Nick Cassavetes said he was not worried about the film release date, and thought that James Blatt did not have legal grounds to enjoin a movie, it still was a huge headache for him and everyone else connected to the movie.
The film Alpha Dog aired at the Prospector Square Theater in Park City, Utah, on January 27, 2006. While reviews were mixed, one thing that many critics agreed upon was the fine acting done by Justin Timberlake.
The film did well at the Sundance Festival and some moviegoers had to be turned away at the door for lack of space. It closed the festival at the large Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in Salt Lake City.
An MTV reporter concluded in a piece about Alpha Dog: “Now the stars are looking forward to the film’s April general release.” That optimism of an April 2006 release date was going to be a lot more wishful thinking than they imagined at the time.
Jesse James Hollywood was going through his own brand of troubles during this time period. He complained of an injury to his right thumb and soreness in his hand, and for that reason, he said, it was painful to wear handcuffs while in court. To counter this, Lieutenant Julian Villarreal Jr. wrote a report stating, Inmate Hollywood refused to go to sick call on December 14, 2005 to see a doctor about his right hand. Handcuffs may be properly applied to the hands of Inmate Hollywood, including his right wrist, despite his claimed injuries to his right thumb.
Prison Health Services noted that as far back as March 2005, Jesse Hollywood had been complaining about problems with his right thumb. In April 2005, a hand surgeon specialist from the County Clinic X-rayed him. It was noted that the base of Hollywood’s right thumb had minor soft tissue, but, otherwise, it was normal and no treatment was recommended.
Of greater concern for the prosecution was Jesse James Hollywood’s propensity for trying to escape, especially one event in June 2005. A report stated that he’d fashioned a sixteen-foot-long length of rope and had acquired contraband material, including cutting tools and weapons. To the officers it definitely looked like Jesse was planning to escape from the jail. He’d already proven that he could get away to a foreign country and stay there for a long period of time. If he escaped again, he just might make it to a country that did not have any kind of extradition treaty with the United States. Finally the report stated: Given Defendant Hollywood’s history of escape risk and physical resistance, the Sheriff’s Department asserts that Defendant Hollywood’s hands and feet must be restrained at courtroom pre-trial proceedings in order to control the significant risk of courtroom escape and/or a courtroom assault.
In another report an officer wrote, During count, Hollywood was disrespectful and non-compliant. When removing him from his cell, he became combative. It was noted that Jesse had in his cell, a weight bag, two razors, three altered razors, a manufactured rope from sheets, ten extra socks, three extra jumpsuits, two extra boxers, four extra towels and six extra shirts. Just where he had obtained all these items was not noted.
In February 2006, the defense team for Jesse Hollywood got what they were looking for. The state supreme court ordered the Second District Court of Appeal in Ventura County to take another look at Ron Zonen’s conduct in his cooperation with the filmmakers. They did not elaborate on their reasons, but one of Jesse’s lawyers, Michael Raab, told reporters, “We believe strongly that this was unprecedented.” (They were referencing the actions Zonen had taken.)
If all the problems with Alpha Dog weren’t enough for the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s Office, that same April they had a new serious problem on their hands. DDA Joyce Dudley, who could have stepped into Ron Zonen’s shoes if he was recused on the Hollywood case, suddenly was in hot water for very similar reasons. She had just written a fictional mystery novel, Intoxicating Agent, but the plot was very similar to a case that she was prosecuting that had not yet gone to trial. This was the Massey Haraguchi case, and the similarities between it and Intoxicating Agent were striking.
What caught the defense attorney’s eye in that particular instance was a name that Dudley cited in her Acknowledgments section in the book—Judge George Eskin, who helped her in editing the book. In the Acknowledgments, Dudley wrote, I don’t believe anyone can write a trustworthy novel without the help and support of friends and colleagues who are willing to read and criticize their work. Among the people she thanked was Judge George Eskin, who just happened to be the presiding judge in the upcoming Hara-guchi case.
Defense attorney Bob Sanger wanted to disqualify the judge in the case, because he had “helped” Dudley on the book. Sanger said, “Intoxicating Agent portrays the prosecution as brave, physically attractive, brilliant and always right. The book describes the defendant and defense lawyers as unethical, corrupt and vile.”
Judge Eskin replied to the motion by saying that he’d helped Dudley in spelling, punctuation and inconsistencies, and nothing more. “To characterize me as having collaborated in writing the novel is, speaking plainly, ridiculous.” Nonetheless, Sanger wanted Judge Eskin and Joyce Dudley recused from the Haraguchi case.
The Jesse James Hollywood trial should have been in progress by the summer of 2006. Instead, legal matters now shifted from Santa Barbara Superior Court to the Second District Court of Appeal in Ventura County. Former state supreme court justice Armand Arabian, who was on Jesse James Hollywood’s side, told the court that Ron Zonen should be recused from the case because of his dealings with the filmmakers. Arabian said that by his actions Zonen had tainted potential jurors in the case. In florid language Arabian declared, “Justice stands here insulted, her blindfold askew, her scales unbalanced.”
On October 6, 2006, the Second District Court of Appeal handed Jesse James Hollywood and his lawyers exactly what they were looking for: DDA Ron Zonen was tossed off the case. The ruling was seventeen pages in length, and it began with a recitation of the facts in the cases involving Jesse Rugge, Ryan Hoyt, Graham Pressley and then on to Jesse James Hollywood. It then told of Zonen’s cooperation with Cassavetes and Mehas, James Blatt’s viewing of the film Alpha Dog, and Mehas’s refusal to cooperate any longer with the defense attorneys.
Of the damning accusation by James Blatt—that Zonen had told the filmmakers to “lie” if they ever had to go to court and explain where they had obtained the information by saying it had come from Susan Markowitz—the court found, The trial court asked Zonen to explain the filmmaker’s comment. Zonen said, “I don’t remember a conversation where we talked about crediting information to Susan Markowitz. However, if there’s information that could have come from both of us, I could very well have said, ‘Credit it to Susan Markowitz. I prefer not being quoted.’”
The court basically believed Ron Zonen on this matter, and focused on whether Zonen had improperly influenced Michael Mehas to stop talking to the defense. The court said this raised concerns and they did see a pattern from Zonen that was troubling. Finally the Second District Court of Appeal stated why they ordered the recusal of Ron Zonen in the Jesse James Hollywood case. This was a death penalty case, and in striking a balance between the state and the defendant, it was necessary to protect the rights of the defendant: A prosecutor in a death penalty case had to be held to the highest standards. Prosecutors should try their cases in the courtrooms, not in the newspapers, television or in the movies. As far as we know, no prosecutor has ever been a consultant (even without pay) to a film director on a pending criminal case that he or she is prosecuting. To say that Zonen went too far in his attempt to apprehend petitioner is an understatement.
The court did note that Zonen had been motivated, not by money or fame, but by a wish to have Jesse James Hollywood apprehended. Nonetheless, he had given out private documents to persons who were not at liberty to have them. And in a double whammy, the Second District Court of Appeal that same day ruled on the matter with Joyce Dudley in the Haraguchi case. They addressed many of the same issues, recused her from that case and went one step further. The court had found Zonen’s motivation to be meritorious, unlike the situation in Haraguchi where the prosecutor was motivated by a desire for literary fame and fortune.
The appeals court noted that in her book Dudley had referred to the defendant as a “dirt bag, despicable, felony ugly, a pig and heartless bastard.” The justices noted: These stereotypical generalizations have no place in a current public prosecutor’s thinking, and there is a reasonable possibility that Dudley’s perspective of the criminal justice system, like Danner’s (her fictional heroine), is so one-sided that she may not exercise her discretionary functions in an even-handed manner.
So there it was—the prosecutor Ron Zonen, who had successfully brought juvenile hall time for Pressley, prison time for Skidmore and Rugge, and the death penalty for Hoyt, was now off the Jesse James Hollywood case, and the person most likely to replace him had troubles of her own. The only silver lining for the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s Office was the Second District Court of Appeal’s decision not to throw the entire DA’s office off the case. They said in part: We do not see the especially persuasive showing of a casual connection between Zonen’s conduct, the former elected district attorney, and the remainder of the deputies in that office.
Just how far the news of this recusal process spread could be ascertained by an article from Russia’s Pravda with a piece entitled: DEPUTY DA REMOVED FROM JESSE JAMES HOLLYWOOD CASE. If this was news in Russia, it could only be imagined what impact this had back in Santa Barbara.
Even after this victory, the defense was not ready to rest on its laurels. They went ahead with their plans to kick the entire Santa Barbara County DA’s Office off the case. Arabian told reporters, “That office is too tainted with Mr. Zonen’s terrible deeds, which can’t simply be eliminated by removing Zonen, the lead prosecutor. The court of appeal ruling gave the defense half the apple, but the entire apple would keep the system of jurisprudence clean in the state of California.”
And so it went, on into the autumn of 2006, the defense not only trying to get the district attorney’s office off the case, but still trying to block the national release of the movie Alpha Dog as well. By now, James Blatt was arguing this latter issue in United States District Court in Los Angeles, saying a film release would “irreparably poison viewers’ minds about the capital case and make it virtually impossible for Jesse James Hollywood to receive a fair trial anywhere in the country.” He said that what had happened with this case was the prosecution joining up in a partnership with a major motion picture company to produce a film according to the prosecution’s version of events. And he added that the movie depicted Hollywood as responsible for the murder. “Think of the public policy poison that is created here, if we are to allow prosecutors and defense attorneys to create their own motion picture divulging their files to control or change the jury pool.” This United States District Court case had the unusual title of Hollywood v. Universal Studios (Hollywood being Jesse James and not the city). In fact, some pundits called the situation “Hollywood v. Hollywood.”
Universal Studios, a major motion picture company, was not taking this lying down. There had been a lot of money invested in Alpha Dog, and now it was almost a year later than its planned release date. If Jesse James Hollywood’s defense team had their way, the film would not be shown in theaters until after the trial, and God only knew when that would be. This was squarely a case of freedom of the press (and films) versus the rights of the accused.
Several experts in the field of these issues spoke to reporters, and entertainment lawyer Rex Heinke told Dawn Hobbs, of the Santa Barbara Press-News. “The courts have repeatedly held there are all sorts of ways to ensure you get a fair trial that doesn’t involve enjoining the broadcast,” Heinke said.
Another First Amendment lawyer said, “I think the likelihood that the court would approve the injunction preventing the release of the movie is next to none. No matter how big the counsel happens to think this case is, it ain’t bigger than O.J. And we all know what happened in O.J.” In other words, O.J. was found not guilty despite the huge amount of pretrial publicity.
Ultimately, these two attorneys were correct—the U.S. court did not block the release of Alpha Dog, and finally, on January 7, 2007, it was released in theaters all across the nation. It was temperately received in most cities, to mixed reviews, but that was not the case in Santa Barbara. Perhaps the defense team’s worst nightmares came true—the public in Santa Barbara lined up in droves to see a movie that was based on a case that they’d been reading about and watching on television news for six years.
The Santa Barbara Independent reported that a representative for the Metropolitan Cinema said the film was doing very well. The Independent reviewer gave the movie high marks, and called particular attention to how the Markowitz murder was a real event that affected real lives.
For the screenwriter Michael Mehas, there was a “surreal” quality to the premiere of the movie in Los Angeles. When he stood with Susan Markowitz outside the theater, and Sharon Stone, who played Mrs. Markowitz in the movie, came up and gave Susan a hug, Mehas told a reporter, “It was the greatest scene to see Susan and Jeff there. Sharon was honoring them that night.”
Mehas added one more thing, and it probably did not sit well with Jeff or Susan Markowitz. Mehas told the reporter, “Without me, without this movie, Jesse Hollywood would have already been steamrolled and sitting on death row. I don’t want him to die.”
After viewing the movie, Jeff Markowitz told a reporter for the Jewish Journal that the film was “poor, not entertaining and depressing.” Because all the names of individuals had been changed, in fact, Nick Markowitz to Zack Mazursky, and Jesse Hollywood to Johnny Truelove, Jeff was very irritated that Jesse Hollywood’s name wasn’t mentioned at all in the movie. Jeff said that while he sat in the theater, he wanted to scream out Nick’s real name so that the audience would know. On other issues he called Ron Zonen, “Nick’s champion,” and was very angry about the whole situation of Zonen being kicked off the case, because of his interaction with the filmmakers. Jeff saved his angriest comments for Jack Hollywood, however. He said that Jack Hollywood “was a cancer in our neighborhood. I don’t think he’s ever taken responsibility.”
The Los Angeles Times was less kind to the film than the Santa Barbara Independent had been. It stated, Alpha Dog digs into the sordid world of Jesse James Hollywood but comes up rather empty. In one portion of the article, it referred to the movie as a moral doughnut of a movie with an equally empty dramatic center. In turning the real-life tragedy of wasted young lives into cinematic narrative, Cassavetes applies plenty of gritty style, but is unable to make any of it very compelling.
However, the Los Angeles Times, like many other media outlets, had great praise for Justin Timberlake’s acting abilities. It wrote: Timberlake turns in Alpha Dog’s most nuanced performance. In a film with several over-the-top characters bordering on camp, Timberlake’s Frankie is the only one who approaches three dimensions, adept at convincingly dishing out some of the movie’s disturbing violence as well as registering subtle shifts in Frankie’s allegiance.
Yet, by the spring of 2007, Timberlake’s performance was perhaps the only bright spot in what the Los Angeles Times had called, “the real-life tragedy” of “wasted” lives. Whether Jesse James Hollywood’s own life would ever be one where he could live outside of prison walls remained to be seen.